2/20/15

Gear: Polish LWP Mess-tin


Mess-tin used by Cold War era Polish army (LWP) shares many similarities with both German NVA and Bundeswehr mess kits, but I will skip description of these similarities as they can easily be seen on pictures.

So, what's different?

Polish tin has only two parts: main pot and a lid with handle. While pot itself is just as big as in German kits, the lid is way deeper, so it can be easily filled with generous amount of soup while pot is used for main meal. Whole kit height is actually a bit smaller than Bundeswehr one, but the rant of the pot is way higher.

Because of this solution, the loop had to be mounted lower, moving up mass center and making the kit less stable when dangling from the backpack. However, usually this does not cause stability problems when you hang the filled pot over fire (it might if you try to fill the pot to the very top).

Another effect of this design is a short handle of the lid. It is still fully functional, and can be extended by feeding a nearby branch through a ring in a handle. Polish kit has a notch for horizontal strap instead of vertical webbing used in German kits.

I'd say it's overall manufacture quality is better and more rugged than NVA, but not as refined as Bundeswehr one. Big advantage of Polish LWP design is it's lid, which can be used as fully functional dish for preparing food or boiling a fair amount of water for coffee while having a meal in the pot at the same time. It was clearly optimized for use in military camp with field mess, so you can get soup in one part of tin and main dish into another - it even has an additional horizontal slit on the back, which allows to connect tip of the lid handle to the main pot and carry them around one-handed even when they're both full. However this design comes at the price of a weight - despite it only has two pieces, Polish mess-tin is heavier than three-piece NVA kit and almost as heavy as Bundeswehr one.

There's also version with pot/lid proportions closer to German designs and modern version made of stainless steel. I don't have any experience with these versions.




SPECIFICATIONS:
Weight: 486g total
Capacity: 1.4l main pot, 0.7l lid pan
Weight to capacity ratio: 347.1



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